Using a PC, how to delete files from a Sunblade 150 IDE drive?

Well, your goal is mostly about not letting the files enter the world out of your control. The easiest and safest thing is to just destroy the drive. Disassemble it and make a clock out of the platters. Sell the computer with no drive.

If you want to sell the computer with a drive, you can probably find an old IDE drive for very little money on Craigslist or eBay. Since it won't boot, you don't need to format it or install an OS. Just let the buyer know what they'll need to do to get it running.

Thanks, SamBones, for your fast response.

My second choice is to completely erase the drive (easy to do with a bootable utility) before selling the computer on eBay. It's not a money thing, it's more than I think someone might have a use for it, and I don't want to destroy something that still works.

My first choice is to delete the files. (and it's okay if they are somehow recovered via aggressive recovery methods, the files are not super private)

I've now found a Linux distro (Ubuntu) that sees the files, but I'm not able to remove them with "sudo rm ...", apparently because the file system (vs. the files) is mounted as read-only.

I don't know Unix/Linux well enough to know how to unmount the file system, remount it as read/write, and after deleting the files remount it as it was initially, in the hope that when the NVRAM is replaced, the computer will boot.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

The command "[tt]man mount[/tt]" will give you all the details of the mount command.

This link too.

Any one of the following [tt]mount[/tt] options will get you read/write to the drive. Just add one to the command you used to mount it with Ubuntu. Then delete away.